Steve Piccolo's Blog

Yesterday I heard someone say that to be confident (or as they put it, to have self esteem) you do what you do because you feel it is the best thing and not because someone else wants or doesn’t want you to do it. Or in other words, if someone disapproves of what you do, it doesn’t faze you because you have conviction in what you are doing. Or at least, that is my interpretation of what was said.

I have been thinking about this, and it is something I’m trying to improve in myself. My conclusion so far is that if I know my decision has been based on what I determine to be sound principles and on what I feel is right, then I can be confident in the face of criticism.

That doesn’t mean my confident decisions will always be ideal. It also doesn’t mean I should be unwilling to accept advice from others. On the contrary, I may even seek advice (and listen openly to advice I didn’t ask for) but have the courage to do what I feel is best, whether or not others agree.

What are your thoughts?

April 30th, 2009 | Category: life | Comments (2)

Some of you heard that I presented a paper at a conference last November. It was in Washington D.C. at the Fall Symposium for the American Medical Informatics Association. The title of my paper was “Somatic Mutations of Cancer.” It has been made available online, so below is a link where you can read it if you’re interested.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=18999255

The idea behind this paper is that mutations are known to play an important role in how tumors start and progress. As tumors get more and more mutations, tumors generally get worse. Lots of researchers are studying mutations in individual cancer types (e.g. lung cancer, brain cancer, leukemia). Recently some researchers in the United Kingdom put together a huge database that combined the results from thousands of these papers. My research was to use computer algorithms to try to find meaningful patterns in the data.

I learned a lot in the process, and it was fun to have others be interested in it.

My co-author, Dr. Lewis Frey, is my PhD advisor at the University of Utah. He’s been instrumental in guiding this research and getting it accepted.

March 23rd, 2009 | Category: Research | Comments (2)

Steve Running the Spectrum 10K

Here’s a picture from the 10K I ran last Saturday in St. George. It was a beautiful run through Snow Canyon. Laurel and I drove down and stayed with friends Dustin and Sunny. You can read more about it on our family blog (that Laurel maintains) at http://piccolopages.com. I’ve been training since the beginning of the year and *really* enjoying it.

March 19th, 2009 | Category: exercise, running | Comments (2)

A friend pointed me to a guy’s Web page that has a bunch of pictures from the Boston Marathon. I guess he ran it while carrying a digital camera. It gives you a feel for what it is like to run the race. It made me want to go run it. One thing that’s neat about it is that every year an estimated 500,000 spectators line the course. That’s over 7 times as many people who will be able to watch the Super Bowl in person this year. Bostonians get so into the race that they hand out water, oranges, and other helps to runners, even though the race has water stops every mile. That’s pretty impressive. The only time I’ve really run in front of a lot of people is in the July 4th parade in Provo, UT…but that’s only because most of them are just waiting for the parade to start. I love the city of Boston, and it’s where my Dad grew up.

Here is the site

You have to qualify for Boston by running a prior marathon at a certain speed, depending on your age and gender (for me, it would be 3 hours and 10 minutes). Anyone want to try for it with me? I’ll help you plan out your training. Dad, that includes you.

January 31st, 2009 | Category: exercise, goals, life, running | Leave a comment

Every year Laurel’s family gets together at a cabin in the mountains. This is quite an experience because she has such a large family. And it’s always fun to spend time with nieces and nephews. This year my brother-in-law caught a hilarious picture of one of my nieces. You should check it out here.

January 4th, 2009 | Category: family | Leave a comment

With all the bad talk that President Bush gets about him, I found this article refreshing and interesting about his personality. Maybe the press paints a different picture of him (sometimes as a result of his own decisions, sometimes probably not) than what he really is.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090104/ap_on_go_pr_wh/distinctly_bush_analysis

January 3rd, 2009 | Category: exercise, life | Comments (1)

Happy New Year!!

I’m the kind of person who likes to make goals, especially at the New Year. It feels good to check things off the list. I remember talking to a friend awhile back who said they sometimes add items to their to-do list after they have done them just so they can have the satisfaction of checking them off the list. That’s how I am, too.

In 2008, Laurel and I made a goal to write a journal entry every single day. And we have accomplished that! Wow, that’s the first time in a long time to have set a New Year’s Resolution and to keep it the entire year! It’s great to have a wife who helps you reach your goals.

This year I have been thinking about a distinction between two types of goals. I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this, but my goal list has “action” goal and “achievement” goals. Action goals are those things you plan to do each day, week, month, etc. An example might be that you exercise 4 times per week. For lots of people, they are content with that and have the willpower to exercise for the sake of exercising. But for me, I need to also set an achievement goal–for example, to train for a half marathon. That gives me motivation to stay with my action goals.

Some people don’t like the pressure of trying to reach a particular achievement because they don’t want to feel disappointed if they don’t reach it. They want to do what they can control and are content with that. This reminds me of Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte. He worked super hard preparing for many swimming events and is very talented, but it just so happened that he was beat in several races by the best swimmer of all time. If not for Michael Phelps, Lochte might currently have a few more gold medals. He probably reached all of his action goals, but it wasn’t quite good enough to reach the achievements he desired.

So I think it comes down to your personality, but it might be better to focus more on action goals because you have the most control over those. But if you’re like me, you still probably will set some achievement goals to give you a few stars you can aim for to keep you going.

What do you think?

January 1st, 2009 | Category: exercise, goals, life, self help | Comments (1)

Have you ever wondered why we call it the “roof” of our mouth when really it’s the ceiling?

December 15th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

“It is true intelligence for a man to take a subject that is mysterious and great in itself and to unfold and simplify it so that a child can understand it.” (“Discourse,” Deseret News, Sept. 30, 1857, 238.)

This makes a lot of sense to me because I am currently in the process of reading journal articles and books that have a lot of technical information. One of the big challenges of doing research is to understand it at a level that I can explain both to people with a background in these fields and to people who have none. I think it’s pretty hard to do, but when you succeed you can make a great impact.

December 8th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1)